“Paper goes on the right side” I heard my mother chide. “Remember? Garbage on the left, recycling on the right.” And compost was in the tub under the sink – I still remember. I grew up like many Americans, in a household that did its best to recycle. Sometimes it seemed unbelievable that separating types of garbage would mean something positive for the environment, but, “if everyone did it,” my mother reminded me, “then it would make a big difference.”

That of course was and remains true. Sadly though, everyone is not doing it. But it might surprise you to find out who is most to blame for our growing garbage problem.

Recycling has become a prominent feature of Americans’ daily dealings with garbage, its popularity driven by a concern that’s been growing nearly as fast as our nation’s landfills. Unlike environmental campaigns aimed at reducing electricity consumption and carbon footprints, the “reduce, reuse, recycle” mantra, ubiquitous since the early 90’s, seems to have escaped the wroth of America’s skeptics and anti-environmentalists. It’s everywhere, from elementary schools to office buildings.

We are told that nearly 7.6 billion tons of solid waste is generated each year, and that municipal waste, our waste, is responsible. At first it’s not hard to believe; despite most municipal recycling rates approaching 30%, per capita consumption is climbing, growing from 2.7 to 4.4 pounds per person per day over the last 30 years. That’s nearly twice as much as most western European countries. So the struggle continues. Or does it?

One simple fact has the potential to change everything, and drastically alter our perceptions of our garbage problem. No one likes to be played for a fool, but the truth about garbage declares that we have all been played.

And here is the truth: the sum of all municipal waste across the country – the very thing we’ve been targeting with recycling campaigns for the last 30 years – amounts to less than a tenth of all solid waste produced. The rest of those 7.6 billion tons of garbage per year is coming not from households and small businesses like we’ve been led to believe, but from manufacturing industries, carefully concealed from the public eye.

This means that if everyone you’ve ever known recycled every last scrap of their garbage, every single day, our landfills would still be growing at a rate of over 7 billion tons of garbage annually. If we include other industrial sources like mining, agriculture and extraction, that number is actually closer to 12 billion.

How could such a simple truth be overlooked by recycling enthusiasts for so long? All of these estimates are freely available in EPA reports, although you might find them a little dated. Suspiciously dated, in fact. That 7.6 billion figure that’s repeated everywhere, and misattributed to municipal waste, derives from a 1988 government report. That was the last time anyone has conducted a census of the country’s non-hazardous solid waste. “Non-hazardous” waste, by the way, includes pesticides, detergents, asbestos, oil, paint, and electroplating.

Unlike the highly organized and well-funded national campaign focused on recycling municipal waste, there is little regulation of industrial solid waste. The EPA has has no estimation of how much garbage these industries are producing today, and there is no obligation that the industries themselves report the amount or location of their waste.

The enormous public effort to promote consumer recycling, began as a misdirection campaign, engineered by manufacturing industry lobbyists in the late 80s, when they were facing a swathe of new regulatory bills being raised by Democrats in Congress. Lobbyists steered the debate towards consumer education and municipal action. It has proven an incredibly effective tactic.

Part of the problem is visibility. Municipal garbage from cities has to be carried off in dump-trucks that we see and smell, to landfills that are usually not too far away from where we live. Manufacturing waste is different. It rarely travels far from its place of origin, and is dumped into aqueous pools, usually on property hidden from public view.

Millions of Americans have changed their habits. It’s time that large industries pitch in.

Despite knowing all this, at the end of the day I’m still going to go home, separate my glass bottles from aluminum cans, and flatten a cardboard box or two. But this time I’m going to add one more piece of paper, not to the recycle bin, but to the outgoing mail, addressed to my Senator.

Trevor Granger is working on his MA through the Department of Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Biology at Columbia University.